At last, the warmer weather has arrived, today gave me the first opportunity to operate outdoors without a coat. It was a pleasant sunny afternoon so I decided to operate outdoors and make the most of the nice weather. Using the Icom 7100 and 65Ah leisure battery and a white stick for 145 MHz and […]
Category: Blog
Easter Weekend Radio Fun
Easter weekend is often the start of the better weather and lighter evenings, so provides a chance to go out portable for the first time in the year. Unfortunately, this bank holiday weekend in true British tradition was wet and cold with rain forecast and temperatures soaring to a tropical 7C. This didn’t stop Chris G8OCV, George […]
PI4 next generation VHF/UHF beacons?
Beacons have like other digital modes moved with the times, making use of the latest digital modulation techniques to improve detectability far beyond the human ear and CW. The name PI4- PharusIgnis4 comes from the ancient words for a beacon, lighthouse and fire and is a digital modulation that is compliant with the IARU Region 1 […]
FT8 on 144 MHz
FT8 has taken the HF bands by storm, a bit like PSK did in the early 2000s. These days it seems the mode of choice for DX stations, allowing them to make a number of QSO is a short duration. If you haven’t checked out FT8 then I would suggest you head over to Joe Taylor […]
CQ WPX RTTY
I recently received back my Expert 1.3K-FA linear back from its holiday in Italy. I noticed some months ago that it would sometimes fail to start and require repeated presses of the power button. After a short holiday in Italy, the manufacturer replaced two relays, and I thought WPX RTTY was a good baptism of […]
Multi Mode Digital Voice Modem with HAT
Let’s start with the name, MMDVM (Multi-Mode Digital Voice Modem) with HAT(Hardware Attached on Top) The HAT has been designed by Flo DF2ET and Mathis DB9MAT and is compatible with the Raspberry PI or PI W Zero. The board will support MMDVM so that’s DSTAR, DMR, P25 and Fusion using the excellent software by Jonathan G4KLX. The Raspberry Pi zero W (WiFi) The board […]